SkySafe offers Forensics as a Service to aid investigations of drone incidents
By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
As police departments, government agencies and operators of critical infrastructure wrestle with the growing threats from maliciously operated drones, to date the focus has been on detecting these UAVs, identifying their operators and somehow mitigating their flights before they can cause serious harm.
However, as the threat evolves, the response also will invariably evolve to include invoking the legal system – bringing the bad drone operators into court to prosecute them for their alleged violations of federal and state aviation laws.
Drone detection and airspace intelligence company SkySafe is seeking to help make drone-related prosecutions and convictions easier. The company has launched a new product, Forensics as a Service (FaaS), to enable law enforcement agencies, public safety teams and certain designated organizations to independently respond to and investigate drone incidents with speed and precision.
“SkySafe’s Forensics as a Service (FaaS) is a subscription-based offering that provides law enforcement and government agencies with end-to-end drone forensic capability—from device recovery to courtroom-ready evidence,” SkySafe Chief Revenue Officer Melissa Swisher said in an email statement.
FaaS uses data extracted from recovered drones—including flight logs, serial numbers and metadata collected through SkySafe’s Covert Forensic Imaging Device (CFID) forensic tools—and combines it with information from the SkySafe Cloud, such as historical drone activity, flight-path visualizations and identification data.
“By correlating these two data sources, FaaS can confirm when a recovered drone is the same one previously detected acting maliciously in a given airspace, producing a verified, prosecutor-ready forensic report that meets strict chain-of-custody and evidentiary standards,” Swisher said.
Swisher said the new product will be offered for professional use by law enforcement and public safety agencies and by approved private organizations charged with protecting critical sites from incursions by malicious drone operators. A one-year subscription to the service includes the analysis of every drone recovered within a given year, along with annual training and certification for investigators to ensure proper evidence handling and analysis.
The service’s training will enable the customer’s personnel to analyze and interpret their own drone data using SkySafe’s tools and platform, Swisher said.
“In addition, SkySafe’s in-house forensic experts remain actively engaged, offering ongoing support, expert analysis and data validation,” she said. “These specialists assist agencies in building detailed, prosecutor-ready reports from extracted flight logs and device identifiers, ensuring every investigation is backed by expert insight and evidentiary rigor.”
Under the terms of the service agreement, SkySafe will also make its certified forensic experts available to provide expert testimony in court, to explain the methods, data integrity and findings contained in their reports. “All forensic analyses are conducted using validated tools and documented chain-of-custody procedures, ensuring that SkySafe’s experts can confidently stand behind the evidence and support agencies through every stage of investigation and prosecution,” Swisher said.
In the event of a drone incursion incident, FaaS will help the customer identify the operator of an errant drone and to establish whether that particular drone and its operator were responsible for the incident – whether or not the drone is recovered.
When a drone is recovered, SkySafe’s service extracts flight logs, identifiers and onboard metadata using certified forensic tools, then matches that information to detections in the SkySafe Cloud. This correlation often reveals the operator’s launch point, flight history and behavioral patterns, allowing investigators to attribute the drone to a specific individual or organization.
“The service enables agencies to extract, decrypt and analyze data from recovered drones and match it to flight records in the SkySafe Cloud, establishing a complete chain of custody and operator attribution,” Swisher said.
In the event that the drone is not recovered, SkySafe’s cloud-based airspace intelligence platform can still provide valuable investigative leads including operator location estimates, repeat-flight patterns and other identifying signatures derived from radio frequency and telemetry data. “While physical recovery provides the strongest evidence, SkySafe’s cloud data alone can help agencies narrow the range of suspects, support warrants or document repeated airspace violations with evidentiary confidence,” she said.
Although for the past several years law enforcement and government agencies have employed SkySafe’s forensic capabilities to support drone-related investigations and prosecutions on a case-by-case basis, FaaS represents the first offer of a service that provides a scalable and cost-effective way to manage those investigations.
Swisher said that initially SkySafe would only offer the service to its U.S. customers.
“Delivering this level of airspace intelligence gives organizations the ability to truly understand and control what’s happening in their skies,” Swisher said in a statement.
“Forensics as a Service is the missing piece that completes that picture. By closing the investigative loop, we’re enabling customers to move from awareness to action—turning every incident into actionable, admissible evidence.”
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Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional drone services marketplace, and a fascinated observer of the emerging drone industry and the regulatory environment for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space and is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry. Miriam has a degree from the University of Chicago and over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing for new technologies.
For drone industry consulting or writing, Email Miriam.
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